Patent attributes
Systems and methods for managing interworking protocols are provided. According to one embodiment, a policy-based provisioning methodology is used by a service management system (SMS) to provision subscriber interfaces of service processing switches based upon parameters of a predefined policy. The subscriber interfaces communicate data in accordance with a first protocol. The parameters include a window size, a window timeout, a number of allowed bad events, an event window size and/or a keep-alive interval. Transport network interfaces, which communicate in accordance with a second protocol, are provisioned to provide a transport between the subscriber interfaces. A first-protocol-over-second-protocol (FPoSP) Virtual Private Network (VPN) is created through which the subscriber sites securely exchange data by establishing a virtual router (VR) corresponding to each subscriber interface. The VRs encapsulate packets received from the subscriber sites within packets of the second protocol and transmit the encapsulated packets through the transport network interfaces.